I was underwhelmed by the first impression. His start on the sidelines was similarly underwhelming as in his first are second game he tried to call a time out with the clock stopped at a very important juncture of the game and one of the sideline extras had to check and stop him from doing it. I cringed.

It has taken me some time to get past that first impression and his ongoing issues with articulating.

I really thought 2008 and 2009 were the beginning of what I feared would be a slow downward spiral. I thought there were signs of a program a bit out of control. I to this day think those signs were legit issues.

That continued at the beginning of 2010. It was pretty ugly going into that Florida game. That ball bouncing our way on the fake FG was huge. I truly believe environment has a significant affect on performance and had that ball bounced wrong and we lost, it would have gotten very ugly in B.R.

But it went our way, the win energized the team and fan base and to Les's credit, he's kept it together better than I ever thought he could.

He gets credit from me for that. I can honestly say that 8 years ago I thought he was gonna be over his head here. While at times he has, for the most part he's handled the enormity of it.

I still have concerns and I'm certainly not one of the ring-kissers that think Les is a calculated genius who plays a dim-witted Columbo to fool his enemies. I think he truly is what you see.

But he's gotten the job done relatively speaking. I have never once called for his firing and I never will. He's exceeded in actual production what my perception of him would dictate that production to be.

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Posted by Tiger Voodoo

Champs 03 07 09 11(fack) 19!!!

Member since Mar 2007

21789 posts

Posted on 7/4/13 at 3:14 pm to Tiger Ugly

quote:
TIger Ugly

fricking fantastic and honest post with great perspective from page 3, the kind of post that, not surprisingly, didn't get a single reply on this board.

I have become one of Miles' biggest supporters, although I certainly don't think he is perfect.

But I also remember all of the mind numbingly horrible game day experiences we had with Saban as our coach that the Miles bashers pretend never happened (if they were even watching in the first place) because LSU is DA BESDHT EVARRR and any idiot can win 80% of their games with SO MUCH TALENT (excluding Saban himself of course) and Miles just holds us back from winning NCs every single year (a poster in this thread actually said we should have had "2 or 3 or 4 more" in Miles' time here

).

I hated the Miles hire when it was made. I wanted Butch Davis.

But I watched the team improve so drastically from the frustrating 2004 squad to a 10-1 team that won the West in 2005 despite losing leaders like Spears, Webster, and Alley, not to mention the chaos of Katrina and realized we had found a very very good coach.

I was more frustrated after 2006, and thought he let the Auburn game get away from us (although the refs certainly helped) the same way we let the Ole Miss game get away in 2001. But 2006 ended on a very positive note, the same way 01 did, which made things easier although I thought it was our most talented team ever and worried that we would certainly be less talented in 2007. So I waited to see if the team would collapse in 07 the way it did in 2002.

Needless to say, 2007 convinced me that we didn't just have a very good coach, we had a coach that had led LSU to the elite of the college football world the way no one ever had before him, and may never again after.

Despite losing so much talent from 2006, the 2007 was one of the most cohesive and well organized group of football players I had ever seen, very similar to the group in 2003. But 2003 was a team that didn't have any expectations, and only played in one truly BIG game until mid November against Ole Miss.

That 2007 team started as the #2 team in the country, and played in big game after big game with a target on it's back, and showed up in every single game, losing two heartbreakers in 3OT, not because they didn't show up, the way that 2003 team failed to do against Florida, which is the reason that season ended with a split title.

Even after the heartbreaker against Arkansas after the most emotional season I have ever witnessed, to rally that team to win the SEC title without it's starting quarterback with all of the questions about Michigan/Nebraska, Miles convinced me that day that there was no coach in the country I'd rather have. And that was before Pitt upset WV (OU beating Missou was NOT an upset) to put us back into the BCSGC against OSU.

The Ohio State beatdown was just icing on the cake imo.

2008 sucked, and I'm not sure I've seen anything like the downward spiral with Lee/Crowton before or since, and the co-DCs was the first real mark against Les IMO. But seeing the way they rallied against #1 Alabama in Tiger Stadium removed any doubts.

Not even the angels in the outfield game against Troy bothered me, or the beatdown against Ole Miss, as we really did push all of our chips in against Bama and came up short.

The bowl game against Georgia Tech, and a new QB indicated to me that this team was still firmly behind it's coach, and that was all I needed to see.

2009 showed that Miles could correct his mistakes by bringing in Chavis, and improving from 7 regular season wins to 9, and feeling that it could have been 10 if not for untimely injuries and a bad call against Alabama, again convinced me that we had the right coach, but not the right OC, despite losing the first bowl game to a good team in a mud pit. I also didn't lose my mind after the Ole Miss clock fiasco, because wtf would anyone do if a Hail Mary is caught short of the end zone?? The 2 plays before that upset me more, but I attributed that to Crowton's frustrating pre-snap issues, and felt comfortable Miles would remedy that the way he remedied the Co-DCs.

2010 the offense got worse because Kragthorpe needed a year off so we got stuck with a coach we didnt want and didn't want to be here either, but we improved again from 9 to 10 regular season wins, beating Urban Meyer and Nick Saban, something many bashers predicted with complete sincerity would never happen again after 2009. The UT game brought frustration back, but again, Crowton had been exposed by that point as the biggest mistake in BR since Lou Tepper.

But once Crowton was finally ousted (claiming to bring HIS REAL offense to Maryland

), Kragthorpe Miles and Stud steadied the Lee/JJ ship beyond what anyone could have expected in 2011 despite the saddening news of his newest challenge in life.

2011 is still, without question, the most impressive season in LSU's history. Period. Anyone who argues that, doesn't understand football. Any doubts about Miles whatsoever, were removed once LSU held up that SECCG trophy with a 13-0 record with only ONE game being decided by less than 2 TDs.

2011 is quite simply the most remarkable season we will ever see. An undeserved bowl game matchup won't change that.

1/9 was a catastrophic event in LSU history, to be sure, but it cast more of a shadow over 2012 than 2011 in my eyes. Which is why 2012 seemed so claustrophobic IMO.

All anyone, at least from my perspective, cared about was Alabama, and everything else just kind of seemed like formality. Every conversation started with 1/9 and ended with 11/3. That was always going to be the tale of 2012, and it showed on the field.

Everyone assumed that Mett was going to be the Mett-siah because the simple thought of no more JJ/JLee simply had to be mean an end to the dark era. So when he and the O struggled at times, we simply couldn't understand how. We sputtered our way through Auburn, Florida, SC, and A&M, wondering why 11/3 wasn't here yet, and when it finally arrived, we saw what we had been waiting for.

Unfortunately, we came up short against a great team, but we showed we were a great team too. And it seemed like an exhale. The offense opened up, while the defense perhaps lost some interest as the NFL beckoned for most of them.

And again, winning 10 games isn't overshadowed by a last second loss to a VERY GOOD Clemson team (all of the LSU SHOULD NEVER LOSE TO CLEMPSON idiots can just GFY) even though we certainly didn't look sharp on either side of the ball.

So that bowl once again will shadow more of the 2013 season for me, even though most of the defense is gone, and I'm actually quite convinced that it will be a positive motivator, especially if Clemson goes on to beat Georgia week 1 and have a championship type season that I think they will.

And of course Miles one upped his great hire of Krag (no one knew that we'd end up with a 3 headed OC when he was hired) with Cam Cameron, who is quite simply a man among boys in the college football coordinator ranks.

Cam has the kind of pedigree and history college coordinators can only aspire to achieve. Antwaan Randle-El, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ladanian Tomlinson, Antonio Gates, Ronnie Brown, Ray Rice, and Joe Flacco owe a great deal to the man who will be overseeing Zach Mettenberger, Alfred Blue, Kenny Hilliard, Jarvis Landry, OBJ, Quantavious Leslie, Travin Dural, Jeryl Brazyl and hopefully Jeremy Hill, not to mention possibly Leonard Fournette, Speedy Noil, Trey Quinn, Malachi Dupree, and countless others that would be fortunate to learn from such a teacher.

So yes, the past 8 years with Les have been the best of my time as an LSU Tiger football fan, but they only have me more excited for the next 8 and beyond.....